There is no ballet so ingrained in the public consciousness as Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. Even those who profess no interest in the art form have likely seen a performance, and its themes have become so deeply associated with…
The Summerdale Congregational Church, one of the oldest in the Edgewater/Uptown neighborhoods, stood at the corner of Farragut Avenue and Paulina Avenue from 1893 until early 2017. In the final days before its demolition, I was granted limited access to…
The second edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial opened to generally positive remarks this past September. Headquartered at the Cultural Center (78 E. Washington), the Biennial spans all four floors of the building, occupies space at several satellite venues, and…
In honor of their 50th anniversary, alongside To the Racy Brink, the Museum of Contemporary Art is staging We Are Here, an exhibition program consisting of three semi-concurrent exhibits drawing on the institution’s wide-ranging permanent collection of 20th and 21st…
It is no small undertaking to decide to adapt Charles Baudelaire’s seminal 19th century volume of poetry, Les fleurs du mal. Some may find its sheer length and poetic complexity daunting, but for the multidisciplinary artists of Theatre Oobleck, it was…
First, it was quiet. Like a street in the early hours before a parade. A feeling of ceremony hung in the air, underscored by the seats still being set up before the stage. The eyes of The Picasso―”like the eyes…
In 1967, a small group of curators, art historians, artists, critics, and architects set up shop in the former Playboy headquarters at 237 E. Ontario Street. They shared in a singular conviction: that Chicago deserved an art space dedicated to…
At the start of 2017, the Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events announced Chicago’s Year of Public Art (YOPA), in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the famed untitled Picasso sculpture that resides at the foot of the Civic Center.…
The backroom of a dive bar is hardly where one expects to find fresh voices in contemporary performance art. Then again, The Hideout has never been just a dive bar. An unassuming outpost on the Elston Industrial Corridor, the nearly…
The University of Chicago Smart Museum of Art’s recently mounted exhibition, Classicisms, presents itself ambitiously. The accompanying text authored by co-curators Larry F. Norman and Anne Leonard states that the exhibition is meant to “explode the idea of classicism as…
No new building in Chicago was as highly anticipated in recent times as the engineering marvel that is 150 N. Riverside Plaza. The 54-story glass office tower–noted for its sharply angled structure and almost unbelievably narrow footprint at the base–has…
A couple of weeks ago, I reported on Chicago’s emerging public art crisis. In that article, I cautioned against alarmism and optimism in equal measure, advice that still applies. I also noted that there’s not much a concerned citizen can…
The Arts Club of Chicago, tucked unassumingly on the corner of Ontario and St. Clair in Streeterville, may be one of the most overlooked and under-appreciated exhibition spaces in the city. Despite its predication on serving as a private social…
The irony is unavoidable, and anyway, it’s appropriate: only in Chicago could a so-called ‘Public Art Crisis’ arise just three months into what has been deemed the Year of Public Art. It doesn’t say much if we simultaneously celebrate and…
“THE SUBJECT IS CHICAGO,” the wall outside the gallery reads. “People. Places. Possibilities.” Purporting to be a survey of contemporary Chicago by way of exhibiting the work of one practicing artist from each of the city’s 50 wards, this latest addition…
As Chicago enters into its Year of Public Art it seems necessary to take the time to look back on the works that helped to secure the cultural acclaim this city receives today. The recently mounted exhibition The Pride & Perils of…
Last Saturday, venerable Chicago contemporary art gallery Richard Gray played host to Art Encounter, a nonprofit visual art education organization founded in 1978 with a mission to “bring an appreciation of art and the creative process to people of all…
Nothing renews one’s faith in the future of this city quite like seeing 150 people turn out, of their own volition, on a weekday evening to witness and participate in a discourse on the role of civic art in Chicago. This…
On a clear, frigid evening last week, despite the rush of traffic outside on Michigan Avenue and the fifteen hundred people seated inside, their breath still visible in the chilled air, there was silence inside the Fourth Presbyterian Church. Then…
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